What do you need to feed your customers to keep them moving through your funnel? This is the second article in my funnel review series featuring a Facebook ad journey that started in the Awareness: Hook stage with WiseStamp. (Check out the first here.)
The journey thus far hasn’t landed me to the next stage yet: Consideration : Call to Adventure. But for this article, I’m picking up at a point that assumes someone has actively moved to considering you and your products.
That’s an important point of distinction. They consider you and your products. You. Your company. Your brand. Your people. Today’s customers are savvy and we have a world of information at our fingertips and while you shouldn’t expect us to do the work, you also shouldn’t expect us not to.
What Customers Need at the Consideration Stage
I want to test out the full journey for review, so I’m actively looking for clicks for more information. If your customer is considering this product and you, they’re looking for a call to adventure. They’re looking for you to provide the reasons to hop on the train and take the journey, and let you be the guide.
Finding my way to more information wasn’t easy from this journey. I had to hunt for it. This is a leap that many people won’t take so your journey cannot depend on it. We’re busy. We’re looking for reasons not to continue.
There wasn’t enough info on the landing page, but because there’s the “Awesome” plan, I know there’s another plan — and yet, I haven’t even really seen what Wisestamp can do yet.
The page I can find a link to shows a lot of information and what looks like the ability to build my own signature and see how it works. I have to note that the link I was able to click to from the journey was directly to the product: https://webapp.wisestamp.com/, not wisestamp.com.
This dives me right into what the product looks like:
Okay, because I love to try out tech, I’ll test. But any time I click on the screen I’m prompted to sign up:
(You should ask yourself if your audience would do the same…)
This is a huge barrier and another ask for trust before the company has earned it.
I am a kick-the-tires kind of gal. I need information upfront before I’m going to create a user name and log in. So this is a point where it’s imperative to know your audience. What will they need to make decisions? What is a natural thought process for them on how they’ll get to where you want them to go? How many people stop here and don’t move forward?
And while I am actively looking for links to click to see how I can engage with this, your customers might be doing the same thing, too. And they might not take the stubborn steps I’m taking — because I’m writing a review article. They aren’t.
One thing I was unclear on from the first stage of this journey was the difference between a regular and a PRO account. I still can’t understand what the difference would be. I have to log in to see that.
That’s another big brick wall that normally would stop my progress. Especially for a product like this one that needs to do a really great job to show me why I need what they are offering. But again — I’m working through the funnel, so I sign up.
Which, if the goal here is the PRO account, is still the Consideration stage. From there I finally see what the upgrade to PRO is offering:
The main thing looks like removing the branding from Wisestamp — and the price is minimal, so I can see that being worth it for someone who has bought into the need or want for this.
That’s another question you should know about your audience here – is this a need or a want? This stage, the Consideration : Call to Adventure stage is about questions, answers, and a willingness to play along. This stage you need to prompt those questions, because it’s quite possible your target audience might not know what they should be asking themselves.
Are you Feeding Customer Curiosity?
The home page at wisestamp.com has some really intriguing pieces on it.
It shows examples, it shows social proof in the numbers of people using it, the companies who have talked about it… all good stuff. I think the examples could be a key selling point — that’s where someone can see themselves, that’s where they can picture what information they want to showcase. It’s the first place in this journey I thought, hey, that could be cool.
Which one piqued my interest, you ask? This one:
I like the RSS feed with title at the bottom – it made me curious to know how they did it and if it was something that would automatically update. And because it’s tech and it’s cool, I’m geeky enough I would just try it and see. And because I already know the price point is minimal, this makes me curious.
Again, for those in the back: Curiosity is the best gift a marketer can receive.
[Tweet “Curiosity is the best gift a marketer can receive. – @jeannieruesch”]
Whenever you can peak curiosity in your prospective customers and get them to ask a question, you have created an opportunity to answer it for them.
I like to know the How-Tos, so I’d look for information on what options I can add and how they do it. Is it dynamic? There’s a blog on their site, but I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to find it — and I would have to hunt and dig to see if that information exists. They could keep me on their site if they had content that fed into my natural thought process here.
Your target customers have things that make them curious. Do you know what those things are? In the consideration stage, the more you feed that curiosity, the more questions they have — and then they are investing time in you. Time in learning. The more time they invest, the more chances they have to consider you and your product worthy of their time and money. The more they see you as their mentor on this new adventure.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’d love to see some of that in this Facebook ad journey.
Other curiosity builders on the home page
There are also some interesting stats here:
Now…I have to make a little fun of the “Email signature of your dreams.” Really? I’m not sure anyone dreams about their email signature… do they? 🙂
I like the stats here, but I also want to know how they know these numbers. My curiosity has been piqued again (excellent)… with no answers to be found (not so excellent).
I want to know what the proof points are. Because I am actively deciding if I trust them to go on the adventure with them, I need details. I need proof to trust them.
Another point of trust is the running ticker they have on the home page:
In the time it took me to copy and paste, this ticker updated to:
So in thirty seconds at 8:08pm at night, 1, 424 emails by their customers were sent out?
and in another few minutes, it jumped to :
This is great! I love it. Now give me reasons to trust it.
I’m going to ask: How do they know this? So tell me.
The Call to Adventure isn’t for the faint of heart.
You can see how the Consideration: Call to Adventure side has some serious work to do. This is the part of the book that draws the reader in with just enough things to fix for the hero you have to keep reading, it’s the part of the movie that builds your “Must-Answer-Questions” so you’ll watch the rest.
It requires knowing your customers, understanding what questions they will ask, what they’ll be interested in knowing and learning, and then feeding that.
If you read anything I write or post, you’ll hear the “be human” theme in just about everything. So I’ll tell you a secret. Guess one of the things I do when I’m considering a technology or product? I look them up on social. But not just the official channel – I look up the employees to see how they talk about the brand, and if they do if they talk to each other.
It might surprise you what you find. I tell you this because the things that matter to your audience will influence what they need to know from you, how they connect to you, and what they will seek to answer. You should know their most likely questions, and what will tickle their fancy. The people behind a brand matter to me, so I seek out answers to see who they are.
The journey continues
This journey started with a Facebook ad for a brand I’d never heard of and a product I didn’t know existed… and one I’m still not convinced I need. But there are some really interesting elements at play in various places that could tell the story I need to hear.
Next on this journey, I’ll focus on the emails I received after signing up for the app, and how they connect to the beginning of this Facebook ad journey that kicked all of this off — and if they are continuing a story that will keep my interest.
Remember, it’s a journey… It’s about the story you put your customers in from the minute they see your ad.
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next post…
